The Umayyad Caliphate, 661-749

The Umayyad Caliphate

When Ali, the fourth caliph and last Islamic religious and political leader with close personal ties to the prophet Muhammad, died in 661, the Arab governor in Syria seized power. Muawiya came from the Umayya clan in Mecca and founded the first hereditary Islamic dynasty, the Umayyads.

The Umayyads continued the rapid conquest of new territories, and the caliphate reached a size that has never been surpassed by a single Islamic realm. The Muslim armies invaded Afghanistan and penetrated into the Indus Valley in northern India and far into Central Asia to China’s borders. In the west, they took all of North Africa, occupied the Iberian Peninsula, and continued on expeditions deep into central France. They maintained pressure on the Byzantine Empire, both on the Mediterranean Sea and on land. Islamic armies invaded Anatolia and besieged Constantinople, but were later forced back to eastern Anatolia.

The center of the Umayyad Caliphate was Damascus, where the caliph resided. The language of the court, the civil service, and the religious class was Arabic, but the realm was administered according to principles adopted from the Byzantine and Sasanian empires. Partly because of conflicts among the Arab tribes, the realm did, however, lack internal stability, and for periods it was virtually in a state of civil war.

The Umayyads took many features from the territories that they had conquered, but a new Islamic culture also slowly began to take form. At the same time, the realm’s new subjects adopted the Arabic language and Islam. A powerful symbol of the new empire was the development of a special Islamic coinage. Large-scale building projects, such as the Dome of the Rock in Jerusalem and the Great Mosque in Damascus, demonstrated the Umayyads’ artistic and political ambitions. They were built on sites where the temples and churches of other religions had stood before, and were embellished with extensive mosaic decorations and monumental Koranic sayings. The Umayyads’ palaces and hunting lodges in Syria were also richly ornamented, both inside and out. Sculptures and murals with princes and dancing girls show that rulers led a life of luxury in these “desert palaces.”

Apart from architecture, there are few artistic remains from the Umayyad period, and they are closely related to Late Antique, Byzantine, and Sasanian art. Works of art are often embellished with figurative elements such as animals and plants, frequently found as parts of large decorative patterns.

Marwan II ibn Muhammad was governor of Azerbaijan and Armenia under Hisham ibn ‘Abd al-Malik, and then, during the brief reign of Yazid II, of Harran in Northern Mesopotamia. Having refused to accept the accession of Yazid’s brother Ibrahim, he seized the caliphate himself in 127 H (744-745 AD).

Marwan moved his seat of government from Damascus to Harran, a town at the intersection of caravan routes to Asia Minor, Syria and Mesopotamia, which is believed to have been the birthplace of Abraham, and coins bearing the mint name al-Jazira were probably struck there.

Marwan was a great soldier, but he clearly enjoyed his comforts when he was not fighting, for it is said that he spent ten million dirhams on his palace complex.

The mint at Harran probably had its work cut out to produce enough dirhams for this flight of extravagance, which was short-lived for the palace was looted and destroyed after the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads. Marwan’s spent his reign suppressing a rebellion in Syria, and then the Kharijite rebellion of al-Dahhak ibn Qays al-Shaybani.

Allthough Marwan killed al-Dahhak, he was unable to hold out against the Abbasids, who believed themselves to be the rightful heirs to the caliphate. Marwan led his troops against them, but was defeated at the Battle of the Greater Zab. He escaped, but was subsequently killed in Egypt in 132 (750).

Thus ended the rule of the Umayyads, after years of internecine strife combined with their supposed inability to satisfy the strict tenets of Islam.